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Outreach/Inreach
About nine years ago, SAS began an outreach/inreach program for local
elementary, middle, and high school students that continues today. The goal is to promote interest in and knowledge of science in general as well as astronomy in particular. We are available to design inreach/outreach programs for
individual classes based on some of the activities listed below.
The facilities available to us are a 0.4m telescope, several 8 inch
telescopes and a newly renovated planetarium. We also have classrooms and
computer labs available for some of our other activities.
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Telescopes: Set up small 8-inch reflecting telescopes with solar
filters on top of Angell Hall and the students can observe
sunspots and solar flares on the sun. The 0.4m is also available,
but it does not have solar filters and during the day it can only
be used to observe Venus when it is sufficiently far from the Sun.
We give a tour of the observatory that houses this telescope and
explain how professional telescopes work.
Angell Hall Observatory
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Planetarium: We can use this new, state-of-the-art planetarium to show
the night sky, talk about the mythology of
constellations, or discuss the science behind the night sky. Students will learn what stars we can see from
Ann Arbor as well as how to tell the time of year from the stars
and other useful facts.
Angell Hall Planetarium
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Astronomy Scavenger Hunt: We made a website with information about
the solar system, stars and galaxies. It's the students' job to
look through the webpages and answer the questionnaire given them.
All the information for the questionnaire is found of the webpages
given to the students.
2002 Cosmology Website
2004 Astronomy Scavenger Hunt
2005 Inreach Website
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Solar System: Talk about the planets then have the kids make a scale
model of the solar system by holding planets the correct distance
from the 'sun'. This is to show that planets are not evenly spread
out. We also show the relative sizes of each planet
with each other.
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Comet: The most exciting part for the students is usually the comet
making activity at the end of the inreach. We make 'comets' out of
household items, such as ammonium, corn syrup and dirt to represent
the actual composition of real comets. Since this also involves the
handling of dry ice, the students are not allowed to handle the comet,
but it is still fun to watch.
On an annual basis we help the Society of Physics Students (SPS) with
their inreach activities. Since it is a series on different topics in
physics each time, they dedicate on day to Astrophysics. Most of the
members in SPS do not study Astronomy, so SAS helps with the astronomy
inreach. This mainly consists of doing the above activities and
providing some of the facilities, such as the telescopes.
We are also willing to participate in other activities outside of campus
per request. Last year we were invited to participate in an astronomy
themed event hosted by the Hands-On Museum. We have also participated in a
Science Night at a local middle school, given
tours of the observatory to student camps, worked with a Girl Scout Camp
and helped local school science teachers plan astronomy related
activities.
We now have pictures from our Astronomy Inreach, which we held in Spring 2005 along with the University of Michigan Society of Physics Students.
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